Nancy Pelosi to John Boehner: “figure it out”

At a press conference Wednesday, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, provided intriguing insight on her approach to leadership. Here it is verbatim:

Q: Madam Leader, Speaker Boehner, this week, is being squeezed on the left and on the right on this deal. As a former Speaker, do you think that he can – what do you think is at risk here for him to bring a deal that President Obama could sign onto, to the House floor. And do you think he should be willing to risk his Speakership on such a deal?

Leader Pelosi. Well, that’s what we all take the job to do. To risk it for something, not to just sit in the office. But let me say this, and you may recall, maybe you don’t, but some of you will recall. In 2006, we won the election, we’re sworn-in as the new Congress, the President of the United States was George W. Bush. The emotion in the election was about ending the war in Iraq, ending the war in Iraq – you remember that? And people thought that when the people had spoken, that something would happen to that effect. We came back here – there were two issues in the election, well three – one was stopping the privatization of Social Security, but we did that sort of early on. So, that wasn’t the emotional piece of the election, the other was ending the culture of corruption that existed under the Republicans here. But the main emotional – people in the streets, by the tens of thousands, you remember that, I remember because there were a lot of them camped out in front of my home. Some of them are still there.

But the fact is, is that we came in, President Bush said to us: “no way.” So how were we going to get legislation to go to the President, in a Democratic Congress, in a Democratic Senate, to a Republican President, that accomplished what we needed to do? We sent a bill that set out that planning should be starting in 90 days, of course the President vetoed that bill. But then we had to deal with Katrina, here we are Sandy, issues that related to the domestic agenda, here we are – SGR, AMT, other issues that we have to deal with now, that need to be extended, and the issue at hand then, funding for Iraq, versus right now, middle income tax cuts. I as Speaker had to make a decision, as a Democratic Speaker with a new Democratic majority, very enthusiastic about ending the war in Iraq, to bring a bill to the floor that funded the troops.

We did it in a trifurcated way, or a bifurcated, however you want to look at it. But we said: “this is one piece of the bill, those who want to fund an unlimited war in Iraq, you have your vote here.” Republicans largely voted for that, some Democrats did. The next piece would be the domestic side of it, including [funding Hurricane Sandy relief], they could do that right now. They can bring a bill to the floor that does not have a – let’s see, a majority, or maybe it does have the majority, but it doesn’t have everybody in their Caucus on board. They can bring a bill to the floor that the Republicans don’t have to vote for, except for 25 of them, and then they can, with that, bring a bill to the floor that does [Sandy] and all of the other domestic issues that will expire by the end of the year.

I had to do it as Speaker. Do you know what it was like for me to bring a bill to the floor to fund the war in Iraq, a war predicated on a misrepresentation to the American people, a highly emotional – in that war where the President said: “don’t even think about it, we’re not changing the policy to Iraq.” So, it’s tough. But you have to do it. So is the point that you don’t want to put your members on the spot? Figure it out. We did. Figure it out. And then, and then go forward and continue to debate the issue, but don’t have our men and women in uniform wondering if they’re even going to be – if they’re going to be high and dry because we couldn’t have the policy debate that would later ensue – but that we couldn’t have it right there that day in a way that would end the war in Iraq.

So, that was what I – you asked me about what I do, that’s what I did. That’s what I did. It was very unpopular and I have to tell you, I’m not sure I ever recovered amongst some on the left for that, bringing that bill to the floor.

Asked if Boehner is doing a delicate “dance” to hold his caucus together:

I just don’t have the faintest idea what goes on in their Caucus, I’d be the last person to know. You know that. But I believe he is a person of good intention and maybe that gets him in trouble, my saying that, I believe he’s a person of good intention. He knows his responsibility to the country and there is a way to say we have to do it, we have to do it, we have to give the middle income tax cut. Because that is the breaks, it breaks the chains that have confined our possibilities….I’m not the right person to ask about what dancing goes on – not my job, not my job – in their Caucus. But I do know there’s a way to bring a bill to the floor that accommodates the needs of the American people, that protects the Republicans who don’t want to vote for it, but that gets the job done for the American people. A piece of legislation that enjoys overwhelming bipartisan support in the country, passed in the Senate, I’m certain would receive two-thirds at least in the House if it were brought up under suspension, but if not, then there’s a way, as we did with Iraq, to bring something to the floor. It’s painful, but this is the job we signed up for.